9 Chapter 9: Skill Evolution

After flying for a while, he received a skill level up notification for a levitation spell followed by another system message. This time, it was regarding the skill evolution for levitation.

It gave him two choices, one was to directly half the mana consumption and the other was to increase the flying speed to half of his current running speed. The choice was quite obvious since Quinn didn't need to decrease the consumption at all since it basically already consumed nothing.

After choosing the speed evolution, Quinn felt his flying speed drastically increase. Although it was only half of his running speed, take note that his attributes were already equal to a level 80 even if you remove the free attribute points. That meant that he was currently flying as fast as a level 40 right now.

He was in the outer areas of the Flatmore Forest right now and his strength could completely dominate this area. This time, he went in a little deeper to find the Tier 1 beast's area. Maybe he could even go to higher tier areas to level up faster.

Right now, although he has the attributes of a level 80 or Tier 8, there are still 7 tier suppressions that attributes can't go against. At most, he can kill a Tier 3 with a little bit of effort.

That's where he wanted to go right now, the Tier three area since he'll need less monster corpses if he used higher tier monsters. On the way, he was also using [Slash] randomly to level it up to increase his maximum damage.

After some time, he finally levelled it up to Tier 1 Level 11. Another prompt appeared in front of him regarding the skill's evolution. One option was to extend the range of slash. This evolution basically uses mana to send out an energy slash and turn the skill into a long range one. Another option was to go for speed type. It will greatly increase the skill's speed.

"I remember I got a fireball skill for a long range attack. I don't need the first one then. I'll go with speed evolution."

The screen disappeared with a flash and then new information appeared inside his head. It brought knowledge of the skill and now he felt like he had known it for years.

[Slash]

Following that was a silver light flashed before his eyes. It was incredibly fast and that was only when he was barely using his strength. If he used utilized fully with his current strength and agility stats, he could deal a terrifying amount of damage in a very short period of time.

Along the way, Quinn continued using it to max it out as fast as possible. After doing so, the speed he could already reach was very terrifying. His enemies would only hear a faint whistle and before suddenly losing their lives without even knowing.

At this time, he reached the area that is congested with Tier 2 monsters. Most of them brazenly attacked attacked especially when they can sense that he's only at Tier 1. Unfortunately for them, they all lost their lives to a silver flash and they died still showing the same ferocious faces as they didn't have time to display other emotions.

When Quinn killed them, a system message asked him whether he'll dismantle the corpses or not, unlike before where the corpses would immediately dissolve into light and leave only the loot.

'Must be the Puppet skill's effect.', Quinn thought inside his head.

Quinn chose to dismantle them in the end since he was here for Tier 3 monsters. He mostly got some meat, fur, leather some other body that could be used to forge weapons such as claws ang fangs. There were also slightly more precious loot with magical properties such as snake's eyes that could be used to make a staff and bear skin that has resistance properties towards elements

Quinn delivered all of them to the warehouse and planned to make blueprints for them and strengthen his territory. If there would be any extra, he can sell it again on the forums to earn some more profit.

Because he had been killing monsters above his tier, he had been receiving a lot of xp points. Although the xp requirement had been drastically increase followed by the increase in tier, he still earned enough to level up twice, raising his level to level 13.

Player Name: Quinn

Level 11 -> 13

HP: 1040/1040

MP: 1540/1540

HP recovery: 20.8/sec

MP recovery: 28.8/sec

STR: 84 -> 104

AGI: 84 -> 104

INT: 124 -> 154

WIL: 114 -> 144

CON: 84 -> 104

CHA: 84 -> 104

Free attribute points: 0

Skills: [STRENGTH (MAX],

[INTELLIGENCE (MAX)], [WILLPOWER (MAX)], [CONSTITUTION (MAX)], [AGILITY (MAX)], [CHARISMA (MAX)], [SLASH], [IDENTIFY], [BLUEPRINT MAKING], [FIREBALL], [LEVITATION], [HUMAN PUPPET CREATION

He already had a Rank 1 being's attributes. It's a pity that Quinn really can't go against those that is way above his current level. Unless he could find a way to remove the suppression, he could only bow down to their might.

Along the way, as he was killing monsters, he found out that they could also drop chests. Quinn just guessed that he never encountered it before because his opponents were too low levelled. Most of the chests he got were Iron with a few Bronze ones and a single Silver chest.

Regarding chests, Quinn seemed to have no luck with them. He always got the minimum rewards for each chest. It was like he used up all his luck awakening his talent and that first chest he encountered which was Bronze.

Thankfully, he was still able to get something decent. It was a skill called [HAWK EYES]. This skill basically allowed him to be able to see something clearly a kilometer away. The range increased by another kilometer for every level up, so he just kept it turned on, disregarding the mana consumption, and waited for it to max out.

There was also another thing called spirit stone. According to the [IDENTIFY] skill, this was a stone that is able to gather mana in the air. It works like a self charging battery. Furthermore, he could use it to make a mana gathering formation if he found the blueprint for it. The formation gathers mana in the air and concentrates it in one area. As long as Quinn stayed inside it, he can recover mana extremely fast and even gain xp while doing nothing. Although the xp gained will be small, it would still be a powerful tool since it could keep running forever and the xp will eventually accumulate.

Quinn sighed in amazement at his identification skill. It could even find out a hidden gem such as the spirit stone. As for the blueprint, Quinn wasn't the least bit worried because he could just make his own. Furthermore, his blueprints were better than the system generated ones in the sense that his blueprints could be used indefinitely while the system generated ones could only be used once. This means that as long as one managed to get a single sword blueprint from him, they could immediately start making swords enough for an army as long they have enough iron.

Quinn kept all his loot and continued on his original path. With his new auxiliary skill, he could spot prey much easier and his efficiency was boosted up. Moreover, his skill was still continuously levelling up.

When [HAWK EYE] finally managed to reach Tier one, it was finally time for it to evolve. He could either get it to expand his scope of vision to 180° or get infrared vision. Quinn thought for a moment before saying in his head, "The first one would probably evolve into some kind of God's Perspective where I could see everything around a certain range like a god. For the infrared vision, I guess it could be some Eye of Truth that nothing can hide against."

Honestly, Quinn wanted both of them but for now, infrared vision was more useful to his current situation since even if he could look far away, monsters could still hide from his vision. Moreover, he could just get a map skill in the future that would show everything in his surroundings.

After choosing the infrared vision, his eyesight turned black for a second before reverting back. Upon using his new infrared vision, he immediately spotted a few figures that were able to hide their presence from him. He smirked before suddenly dashing at a great speed towards one of the monsters.

Before it even had the chance to be surprised, it was already dead and became loot for Quinn.

Quinn quickly hunted the others before advancing deeper. After a few moments, he could already feel a faint suppressing power. This meant that he was already approaching the tier 3 area.

Flying some more for a few minutes, the first monster appeared in front of him. This one was already twice as big as the Tier 2. As they increase in Tiers, their size also become bigger aside from special monsters such as parasites and some insects.

After flying close to it, he found out that the monster was actually a huge brown wolf. Quinn quickly checked the information provided by [IDENTIFY] and learned that it was an Earth Elemental Wolf. It possessed great strength and an even stronger defense. The only weakness it had was it's absurdly slow speed its was. However, its weakness was covered by a domain skill it had. With it, the wolf can control the ground in a 1m radius. The only way to really defeat it was to attack long-range.

Quinn then remembered the fireball skill he had and decided it was time to use it. He never levelled it up so he wanted to take this chance.

Quinn extended his hand our and aimed at the wolf. He chanted inside his head and a fireball quicky shot out towards the target. It caused a small explosion on the wolf's face.

Although the attack didn't coz much damage since it was only level one, it was still boosted by Quinn's stats that the impact made the wold momentarily dizzy.

Quinn took this chance to spam as much as he could to keep the wolf is a stunned state and to level up the skill as fast as possible. After a few minutes, the skill maxed out and it was time to evolve.

The choices this time were either to condense the fireball into a single point and turn it into an arrow to give it extra speed and piercing power. The other was just to pump up the fireball with more energy and give it a strong explosion power.

Quinn chose the fire arrow path for a few reasons. One is that he needed to piercing power to penetrate this stubborn wolf's defense. Another is that the fire arrow also pursued speed. Quinn was an avid believer of the saying "Speed is King". Also, he wasn't really that much of a fan of big explosions and destruction.

At Tier 1 Level 1, [FIRE ARROW] could shoot out one arrow at a time. However, as Quinn used it more and more and the raising its level, he was able to finally summon 10 at a time after maxing it out.

At this moment, the wolf was already in a miserable state. It had burnt marks here and there and was already on the verge of dying. Arrows made of fire shot out like machine guns as they completely decimated the poor wolf.

Finally, the notification came informing him of the wolf's death, allowing him to collect its corpse. Quinn used [HUMAN PUPPET CREATION] on the spot started refining the corpse.

White flames emerged from underneath it as it started burning the the body. Slowly, it started shrinking until all that was left was a lump of bright red flesh. Throwing an identification skill at it, he learned that aside from being made into human puppets, it could also be eaten since it had very high nutritional value.

"That's great! I can also use this on lower tier monsters without fusing them and just serve as mine and my people's food."

After refining the flesh, it was time to refine the soul. A mini transparent figure of the wolf flew out of the lump of flesh and was also quickly covered by the white flames. All that was left was a few strands of milky looking mist. It was then condensed into a white orb before flying into his inventory together with the flesh.